The Edge of Everything

Don’t turn to this book for the facile or expect platitudes. Perlstone wrenches language and syntax to deliver to you an edgy and unique perspective. Well crafted, these poems are hard-won gems of insight. Follow her lens - she will (to misquote her) ‘... give you a reason to turn somewhere in your own mind'.

— Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

In The Edge of Everything Phyllis Perlstone writes a poetry of transformations and conversions: like mass into energy, so time into memory, landscape into thought where, as she says, “What I had can disappear into something that has nothing to do with me.” Where does the self end and the world begin? Perlstone is both enraptured and disturbed by the endless process of existence, engaged and estranged by what the light pins down for our contemplation in this world that we happen to be in and that continues without us: the green-winged insect, the citizens of Chicago walking by the lake with their “Giacometti shadows”, a child painting, a pelican turning like a yacht, a row of soldiers. As sparkling as the light that fills them, these splendid and original poems create as they reveal the connectedness of everything.

— Stephen Edgar

Shortlisted for the 2008 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, winner of the Women's Writers Biennial Book Award in 2009.

Phyllis Perlstone, a Sydney poet, was earlier an artist and filmmaker, then turned to poetry full time. She has gained awards and written reviews and articles. Her poetry is published in various journals and anthologies including Westerly, Siglo, Social Alternatives, Notes and Furphies, Meanjin, Blue Dog, and A Way of Happening. Her previous book is You Chase After Your Likeness.